Multimodal Semiosis in Science Read-Alouds: Extending Beyond Text Delivery

This study examines elementary teachers reading children’s science books aloud to students in the US. Our findings show that science read-aloud semiosis (meaning-making) extends beyond text delivery. In addition to making a written text orally available to students, teachers also deploy different types of gestures (pointing and iconic gesticulation) and pictorial representations (narrative and conceptual) as they scaffold students’ understandings. Further, teachers are shown to engage in two distinct forms of meaning-making: multimodal description and multimodal explanation. A conceptual framework is proposed that elementary science educators can use to systematically incorporate multimodality into aloud reading practices.